The Better Liar(11)

“The ending doesn’t count. Every German sausage is a -wurst. It literally translates to sausage.”

Mary slapped another miniature bottle of schnapps into my palm. “Drink this. Stop talking in German.”

“This fruit-and-nut-filled sweet bread sounds like it was…pilfered,” Alex Trebek went on. The contestants stared at him, slack-jawed. “It’s called stollen,” he explained, when the buzzer went off. “Stollen.”

I laughed. Mary glanced at me. She was back in her leggings, cross-legged on one of the double beds, holding a pillow in her lap. The room seemed more stable with her in it. Alone, I’d felt almost disembodied; the thick green felt curtains and the industrial air-conditioning unit absorbed all the ambient noise, even my own breathing. After George’s, I’d come back here and tried to sleep, lying motionless on the bed, trying to think of ways to explain my absence to Iker.

    I’m so sorry. I was overcome by grief. I hope you understand.

I was shocked. I needed a few moments alone.

I couldn’t look at her anymore—I couldn’t be in that room—

“Did you know this is the first time I’ve ever gone anywhere by myself?” I said, as Jeopardy! went to commercial.

Mary thumped off the bed and went to get another bottle of vodka, weaving slightly. “I feel like my mouth is making, you know, more than the amount of spit it’s supposed to make,” she said, talking over me. “Do you ever get that? Wait, what were you saying?”

“Are you drooling?” I took the vodka bottle out of her hands as she struggled to open it and tossed it onto the opposite bed. “That’s not a good sign.”

“I didn’t mean drooling. That’s not what I meant. I’m going to wash my face. You keep telling me what you were telling me.”

I fell back against the pillows. “I’ve never been on a trip alone before.”

Mary stuck her head out from the bathroom. “How old are you? Like thirty?” she asked around a toothbrush.

“Thirty-one.”

She disappeared, and I heard her spit into the sink. “That’s crazy.”

“I’ve never been anywhere, really. Dave got his job right before our wedding, so we couldn’t take a honeymoon, and before I met him my dad was sick, so we never traveled. I don’t even remember traveling when I was a kid. We went to the Grand Canyon once, I guess.” I wiped my nose.

The water ran briefly, and then Mary exited the bathroom. She looked different barefaced; despite her bronzed, freckled sternum, the skin on her face under all the contour was like marble, and her unpainted eyebrows were girlishly curved, without the harsh arch she gave them with the pencil. “I got your towel all black,” she said. “I couldn’t find the Kleenexes.”

“They’re not my towels,” I said.

    She shrugged.

Jeopardy! came back on as she flopped down next to me on the bed, humming along with the theme. “How come your husband didn’t come with you, then?” she asked. “If you’re scared to be here by yourself?”

I stared at the screen as DAILY DOUBLE appeared, accompanied by air horns. “I didn’t want him to meet her,” I said laconically.

Mary chewed peanuts. “Your sister?”

I nodded.

She waited for me to say something else. When I didn’t, she said, “How come?”

The Jeopardy! contestant paused; the air conditioner rushed in to fill the silence. “She did a lot of drugs,” I said over its heaving breaths. “Heroin, lately. That’s how she died.”

“Oh.” Mary stuffed more peanuts in her mouth.

I shifted on the pillow, pulling my blouse down over the roll of flesh above my waistband. “You look like her, kind of. Without your makeup on. She had hair like mine, though.”

“?‘Return to Sender’!” Mary yelped, spraying peanut dust. “I knew it. Was she pretty?”

She hadn’t turned to me; it took me a few seconds to catch up. “Robin?”

“Yeah, your sister. Was she pretty?”

“Yes.” At least when I’d known her she had been.

“All pretty people kind of look alike,” Mary said, unblushing, still watching TV. “At least that’s what I think. I get told I look like people all the time. Daughters…nieces…Amy Adams…” She grinned at me. “A young Melanie Griffith.”

“The group of painters known as ‘the Eight’ established this ‘sooty’ school of art,” Alex Trebek intoned.

“I wish I had something. Like falafel. Or a gyro,” I said.

Mary silently offered me the packet of peanuts.

“Peanuts aren’t falafel.”

“They’re all we have.”

I screwed up my face as she pushed them at my cheek. After a few seconds she gave up and fell back next to me on the bed, sending peanuts scattering across the floor. “Leslie,” she started, and then seemed to forget she had been about to say anything.

    “Have you been a lot of places by yourself?” I asked after it became clear she was lost in her own thoughts.

“Um…here. Texas. One time I got flown out to Florida to be in a short film about a dog. But then it never aired anywhere.” She yawned. Her teeth were white and perfectly aligned, like a toothpaste advertisement.